Most holiday decorations have been taken down for the season, so I feel safe now in admitting it. This was my first Christmas not believing in Santa Claus. I understand that might need a little bit of explanation. Some personal history might help.
I was the last kid on my block to stop believing in flying reindeer, because my father was a photographer. He had attended a Christmas party at our neighbors’ house across the street. He had seen Santa’s sleigh with his own eyes.
More importantly, he had taken a photograph as Santa flew by. My eight-year-old eyes widened as he showed me the evidence. That was definitely a sleigh piercing the sky. A person was waving from it. It wasn’t a model. There was no string dangling it in midair. The scene was framed by the Embergs’ kitchen window, which was identical to ours. I had no choice but to believe.
My friends in the neighborhood lost faith in Santa, but I continued to hold firm for another year or two. Sometimes I would tell them about my Dad’s photograph, but usually not. Some secrets are better kept to one’s self. None of us knew about double-exposure photography. And I never faulted my father for extending my childhood.
After all, he only provided the evidence. My belief in that evidence was mine. I had my first paper route around then. Daily newspapers struck me as similarly miraculous, with the magic happening mostly while everybody slept.
Case in point: A small plane once crashed into a house just a few blocks from our house. I rode my bike to see it. Somehow, photographs of that plane and the house were in the newspapers I delivered the next morning. How could that be possible?
Santa eventually faded, but newspapers became a lifelong obsession. For years after college, I delivered all the newspapers in Chicago’s second tallest skyscraper. I loved having most of my responsibilities completed before breakfast. It always felt like another one of those secrets best kept to one’s self.
Later I built a business, offering Yale professors a full array of newspaper options, delivered to their doorsteps before their day began. I reveled in being the last hands to touch what I never stopped believing was a modern miracle.
We delivered the word-length equivalent of a novel every morning, comprised almost exclusively from what happened the day before. I insisted my drivers understand their outsized importance. They must not miss any subscribers — make a list, check it twice. That affirmation started each customers’ day. Flying sleighs couldn’t have delivered the news any faster, literally before the ink had dried.
I stopped participating in this modern miracle only a few years ago, but I kept having my newspapers delivered. I’d open my door and there was today’s gift, waiting to be unwrapped.
My newspaper now arrives electronically. I’m sure there are still human hands involved, but not ones I recognize. I miss hearing a thud on my doorstep, waking me with the assurance that I haven’t been forgotten.
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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and archives past columns at www.dksez.com.
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